MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA ‘S MESSAGE TO HISTORICALLY UNDERSERVED COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS: EXECUTIVE OFFICES FOR MY PROGRAMS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR ACCESS TO EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY.
THIS WEDNESDAY, LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT BOARD WILL CONSIDER GIVING NO-BID SWEETHEART LEASE TO CITY OF LOS ANGELES AFTER $6.3 MILLION OF SCHOOL BOND FUNDS WERE USED TO ILLEGALLY CONVERT CLASSROOMS INTO EXECUTIVE OFFICE SUITES FOR UNEMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS FUNDED BY FEDERAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS FUNDS DIRECTED BY THE MAYOR.
Van de Kamps Coalition Urgently Seeks Los Angeles Residents to Call or E-mail LACCD to Protest The Lease Of The Campus When LA City College Should Be Offering A Mix Of Profit-Oriented Classes That Would Allow Van de Kamps to Open
Executive Administrative Offices Place At Risk The Entire Future of Van de Kamps As A Community College to Serve Underserved and Relatively Isolated Hispanic and Minority Students That Could Attend Community College at Van de Kamps
What Your Voice Can Help Accomplish Now:
Your telephone call or e-mail demanding that the LACCD Board of Trustees vote against the Mayor’s Political Theft of Van de Kamps can defeat for a second time the effort of LACCD staff to “hand off” the brand new $72 million community college campus. Defeat of the City’s Lease will force the LACCD to return the campus to community college use. All economic viability studies done by LACCD showed overwhelming demand and financial viability to succeed.
Can you help by making a quick phone call or sending a quick e-mail to the Board and other public officials?
THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO SPEAK BLUNTLY TO LACCD BOARD MEMBERS AND THE MAYOR ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS SCHEME.
A draft letter to the officials of Los Angeles Community College District and other officials is set forth below. The proposed letter below is self-explanatory. Details about the controversial conversion of the historic Van de Kamps Northeast Satellite Campus of LA City College into a “commercial leased-tenant facility” to benefit unemployment programs funded by the Mayor are found at http://www.vandekamps.org/.
This Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”), the Board will consider a resolution to hand most of the Van de Kamps Building over to the City which in turn will sublease it to the same unemployment programs it tried to give it to in mid-April. You can view the resolution yourself at:
http://www.laccd.edu/board_of_trustees/board_agendas/
The resolution is on pages 155-156 of the Adobe pdf of the posted agenda package for May 26, 2010 available for download and viewing.
The Van de Kamps Coalition, for almost a decade, worked to save the historic Van de Kamps bakery building and helped former State Senator Richard Polanco and LACCD officials to bring a Northeast Campus of Los Angeles City College to an area of the City that LACCD’s own studies showed were historically underserved by the District. We need your voice to hold LAACD to its promises.
IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY, May 26, 2010 at 3:30 p.m., your voice and/or appearance is requested to support this key resolution:
Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees Meeting
West Los Angeles College Campus
Fine Arts Theatre, Room FA 100
9000 Overland Avenue
Culver City, California 90230
IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON WEDNESDAY:
The Van de Kamps Coalition is asking Los Angeles residents from all over the City to telephone to express outrage over the propose loss of the brand new $72 million community college campus to executive offices and a few training rooms for unemployment programs.
IF YOU CAN MAKE A TELEPHONE CALL, CHOOSE ANY ONE OR TWO OF THE FOLLOWING:
LACCD Board of Trustees Secretary (213) 891-2044
Chancellor of LACCD (213) 891-2201
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (213) 978-0600 or (213) 978-0721
IF YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL TO PUBLIC OFFICIALS:
Cut and paste the draft letter below to the list of recipients to put Van de Kamps back on a path to be the Satellite Campus of Los Angeles City College at the historic Van de Kamps Bakery.
CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESSES INTO YOUR “TO” ADDRESS:
mayor@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, councilmember.reyes@lacity.org, assemblymember.deleon@assembly.ca.gov, larry.frank@lacity.org, georgia@gmercer.net, mailto:candaele@sbcglobal.net,%20mfield@laccd.edu, mfield@glendale.edu, mona.field@gmail.com, tpark@email.laccd.edu, nancysuepearlman@aol.com, msantiago@email.laccd.edu, justincl@laccd.edu, webmail@da.lacounty.gov, vdkcoalition@gmail.com
CUT AND PASTE THIS LETTER INTO THE BODY OF YOUR E-MAIL (EDIT AS NEEDED FOR YOUR COMFORT WITH THIS ISSUE) AND ADD YOUR NAME AT THE END:
May 24, 2010
RE: Reject City Lease Of Van de Kamps Building; Return the Van de Kamps Campus to Community College Purposes Promised to Voters for A Decade
Dear LACCD Trustees and Mr. Mayor:
I am writing in opposition to Com. No. FPD3 on the Wednesday agenda of the Los Angeles Community College Trustees for the following reasons:
1. LACCD used $72 million of taxpayer bond monies to build the brand new community college satellite campus for students, not commercial office space.
2. For more than a decade Trustees such as Sylvia Scott-Hayes, Kelly Candaele, and Mona Field have promised voters that they would DELIVER a Northeast Satellite campus to address the unequal access opportunities for young adults in Northeast Los Angeles.
3. The State of California gave $3 million to this campus for the restricted purpose of a Satellite Campus of LA City College, and this action takes away the Satellite Campus.
4. The voter approved Measures AA and J that allocated $60 million of new taxes to develop this high priority community college access opportunity.
5. LACCD staff have ignored two economic feasibility studies showing Van de Kamps can be initiated as a successful campus with both profit-oriented and traditional community college classes.
6. These studies mean that the Board has no substantial evidence to support its proposed “finding” that that the Northeast Campus buildings are NOT NEEDED for community college purposes. They are needed now!
7. The City funded unemployment classes may properly be included among the possible profit-oriented classes offered at Van de Kamps, but the placement of executive administrative offices in 60% of the school building is highly offensive to the core mission of the Los Angeles Community College District.
8. LACCD and City of Los Angeles joint actions improperly discriminate against the historically underserved and predominately minority communities. The action tell our young adults they are not deserving of a community college.
For the above reasons, the LACCD must begin offering as many community education classes (non-credit fee-based classes like computer skills, artistic endeavors, conversational foreign languages, creative writing, etc.) and contract classes (employer paid skills training) as possible. This is the positive path to establish the Van de Kamps campus as a financially self-sustaining Satellite of LA City College.
I join the Van de Kamps Coalition and urge you to halt ill-conceived efforts led by your former Chancellor to abandon promises you made to open Van de Kamps under LA City College supervision. The effort to hand this $72 million new campus over to tenants of the Mayor’s Office, instead of maintaining City College stewardship, will be an action remembered by voters at the next election. If there is a vote to approve this ill-conceived LACCD staff proposal, I know I will not forget how the LACCD Board helped Mayor Villaraigosa literally steal this campus away the community it is intended to serve.
Most sincerely,
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